The Philippine Theatre
by Arsenical
Summary: An interviewer speaks with a veteran of the zombie war in the Philippines.


_I received the call from Max Brooks one morning, saying that he wanted to expand his book, he wanted to cover literally every corner of the globe, be it a priest from the Vatican, one of the lucky few to get out of Iceland or just another veteran in Egypt or Brazil or Australia. Max Brooks made clear to me that he wanted the voice of the world to be heard. I argued that I didn't have the stipend to be able to travel the world, with which he told me I didn't have to travel the world. He told me all I had to do was to speak to my own people in the Philippines._

_Knowing that I was to be a part of Max Brook's worldwide bestseller was almost a dream for me, an aspiring freelance journalist just out of college. Along with that, he said that my report would also be included in an expanded account of his earlier report to the United Nations – and an assurance that I would get a cut of the profits from the new edition of the book, should the book's release continue as planned._

_Without hesitation I packed my bags and took the first flight headed for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in the South-East Asian Federation of Nations, where I knew exactly who I wanted to interview. She was the most famous woman of the war, the leading figure in Southeast Asia's war against the living dead. Dubbed by her country as the "Lioness of the Philippine Islands", known by the world as "the female Bolivar" for her effort in aiding her fellow Southeast Asian nations in their war against the living dead._

_For this act she was ostracized by her government for seemingly choosing another nation over her own, with the new established government in the Philippines publicizing accounts of her apparently choosing to abandon her country, the real story of which is still shrouded in mystery for me. Though in the number of times I visited the Philippines, I had heard nothing but praise for Almira Razon by the local people._

_I meet her by her apartment in a high-rise building. She was 52, her right hand was missing, and her posture gave off an aura of strength. Merely looking at her somehow proved that this woman was able to save an island nation. When I looked for information on her before the interview, I saw a portrait of the Lioness, her missing right hand obscured by her iconic black trench coat. The picture of her wearing the black trench coat over her military uniform, pointing her left hand over the horizon is as familiar as the picture of Che Guevara and Chairman Mao._

_**Good morning, Ms. Razon. I called a few days ago about meeting you for an interview regarding your role in the war.**_

Yes, good morning. What exactly do you need to know?

_**Other than your first-hand accounts, I would like to know... um... numbers, ma'am. Number of soldiers who participated, number of casualties, estimated number of infected killed.  
><strong>__For the nature of the book of Max, I've omitted these numbers so as to not limit the human factor in the interview._

Yes, I think I can do that. Where do you want me to start?

_**Describe the beginning. Describe how the infection took over the Philippines.**_

Manila fell with ease. One plane, that's all it took. One plane carrying an infected man or woman, then the whole plane falls to infection, and then the whole terminal falls. Any attempts by the government to quarantine the zone failed, and before you knew it the overpopulated streets of Manila were filled with zombies. After Manila fell, all other cities in Metropolitan Manila fell like dominoes. The surrounding provinces fell easily. Before you knew it, the zombies had somehow been able to swim across the seas. Across the islands of Visayas and the jungles of Mindanao, the zombies began to outnumber the local populace. Palawan, Cebu, and Davao – they all fell easily.

The cities were slow to react. No news came from the Palace, people kept wondering where our dear President was in such a crisis. When news footage leaked of what happened to Manila, people stopped wondering and began to run. Few people tried to fend off the whole horde of dead slowly lumbering into their homes. They all ran. They ran to the sea, to the jungles, to the mountains. It didn't matter. When they ran, they'd find out that one of their members was infected. That one infected person would be a close relative of five other people. They'd have no choice but to keep the infected person with them. That was the last mistake they ever made.

The Philippines was no more. She used to be the Queen of the East, the Pearl of the Orient Seas. Now her fate was worse than China, worse than India. When their governments did all in their power to stop the mass of zombies from overwhelming their whole country, ours was passive. It did nothing. For the first months of the infection we heard nothing of the Palace in Manila. All we heard was the helicopter footage of the horde swarming the Palace. Sporadic gunfire was seen by the news chopper, followed by some of the Palace guards fleeing on a boat by the river that stood beside the Palace.

Did you know that news chopper would be famous?

_**I believe I've heard something about a helicopter filming the whole city.**_

Well the footage it released of the zombies taking over Metropolitan Manila would be one of the most iconic images of the war worldwide, it was as famous as Yonkers – can you imagine that? It showed the seriousness of what we were facing. There were nearly 20 million people living in Metro Manila before the infection. Only thousands were able to flee – maybe less, who knows. Most of those able to flee were from the edges of Metro Manila, in the cities the farthest from Manila itself.

After Metro Manila fell, almost all of the Philippines seemed to follow. Even the most isolated of islands seemed to have found a way to bring the infection to their shores. In less than a month, the remaining population was in hiding. They were hiding in the mountains, in the jungles, in the seas. Those who were able to fend off wave after wave of the zombies did so at great cost. We were not well equipped for this. Our weapons were as old as the Vietnam War, our ships came from the time of the Second World War, and our Air Force was all but worthless. They had no fear. When they saw our planes, they did nothing. It seemed as though the Filipino were doomed since the beginning.

Oh and that news chopper that brought all the footage of zombie-infested Metro Manila? It went down just outside Metro Manila after losing fuel. We saw the four mangled bodies trying to get out of the locked helicopter doors. We saw extra footage there, footage of how the zombies got in and had bitten one of the crew members, then how they were able to fend off the other zombies from entering the helicopter. Afterwards we watched how they decided to just lock themselves inside the helicopter. They died a day later when the bitten crew member turned on his fellows. That footage was never released to the public.

_**Where were you when the infection started?**_

I was at the airport. The very day the plane carrying the infected landed, I was at the gate waiting for my cousin who had come home from Hong Kong for her vacation. Nothing pointed to that day becoming a nightmare. Due to my status as military officer, I had a few bodyguards with me, but I expressly ordered them to wait outside while I fetch my cousin. Everything went wrong when the gates opened.

I saw blood, screaming and people running. My cousin was running, while there was what looked like people covered in blood chasing after her. Along with my cousin there were a few other people also running, all of them also being chased by these people covered in blood, shambling along while making weird moaning noises. Next thing I know, someone was ordering the gates to be closed and my bodyguards had come up from outside to get me away from the gate.

I resisted, of course, and the gates were slowly closing while people tried to get out. Some got out, but my cousin was still on the other side and the gate was closing fast. She was screaming as this man behind her was biting her thigh. I grabbed hold of her outstretched arm, and then another man bit me on my hand. Almost immediately afterwards, the gates closed shut, leaving my hand inside. It was horrifying. I guess whatever parasite, disease, virus or infection there was in a zombie's bite hadn't travelled to the rest of my body before the gates ripped my hand off. I guess I'm one of the lucky few. The gates closed shut not one second after I got bit.

I didn't focus on the severed right hand; I was more focused on the fact that my cousin was being mangled on the other side. Before I could react any further to anything, the power went out and somehow, the gates opened up again. I never knew if they automatically open in a power outage or if someone opened them right before the power went out.

All those people on the other side of the gate suddenly poured out, shambling slowly and moaning; my cousin was already one of them. Before I could get to her my bodyguards had me by my arms and were rushing me out of the building while I continually kicked and protested.

One of my bodyguards, punched me and after that, I woke up in a room in the Presidential Palace with a black eye and a bandage over what used to be my right hand. When I tried to speak I found out that they had wrapped my mouth shut with duct tape. I guess they thought I would turn into a zombie. My other hand was also taped up to make sure I wouldn't try to take off the duct tape on my mouth – or to scratch at anyone in the case if I turned into a zombie. Who knows?

After a few minutes I was rushed onto one of many helicopters waiting outside the Palace, all of them heading for the President's summer house up in Baguio. It was a sight to behold. No less than twenty helicopters were there outside the Palace, all of them ready to evacuate the President, his family, his cabinet and his high-ranking military officers.

Manila fell within days after we vacated the Palace.

_**How did your government react to the infection?**_

As much as the whole world thought otherwise, the government was ready to meet the infection – it just wasn't publicized. If the news spread that the President himself fled for his summer house up in the mountains of Baguio, then all of Metro Manila would be in panic. When rumours spread that the Presidential cabinet fled Manila, news stations were _heavily_ bribed to report otherwise. It was staged; they called a fake press conference in the Palace days before the planned evacuation. Then when the rumours spread that the Palace was vacant, they ordered news stations to show the world the fake press conference, with the President in all his glory telling his citizens to stay calm.

Within hours of vacating the Palace, I received word that military units inside Metro Manila were being diverted to Baguio, with only skeleton crews manning their military encampments. Armouries were emptied and all of our military resources were being diverted to Baguio.

When the first infected came through our airports, the Presidential Palace was doomed since the beginning; when news footage came of the Palace being stormed by the zombies, all hope seemed lost. Then, barely a week later had the President himself appearing on what remained of national television to say to what remained of his people that they were preparing to fight off the horde of zombies. The city of Baguio was proclaimed as a temporary capital – all remnants of the armed forces were diverted to the north to aid Baguio in its fight for survival.

When the President approached me, asking me to create a plan for all of this, I told him it would be a simple plan, but a tiring one. Filipinos, in general, are an impatient people. They wanted us to fight off the horde immediately; they wanted their homes back as soon as possible. I made it clear to the President that it would take years before we could live normally again – if ever. The President had no choice but to agree with me.

_**You mean to say you went on the offensive immediately?**_

I wanted to – everyone wanted to. Everybody wanted to return to their homes immediately. But we had more pressing matters. Parts of Baguio were already overrun. It seemed like the horde would reach the President's summer house within a week – a few days, maybe.

_**How did you manage to hold off a large horde of... thousands of people?**_

Hundreds of thousands! There were plenty of people seeking refuge there – and Baguio did look to be a promising place to hide out. It was high in the mountains, there were only a few highways connecting Baguio to the rest of the world, there was only one tiny airport.

We had to scramble to keep the living dead at bay. We constructed barriers made of cars, buses, jeeps, anything we could to hold them off. We were tasked with only protecting the area around the President's summer house – which was then known as the "new" Palace. We had no choice, we were lacking in resources to properly defend all of Baguio. We blocked off the roads, secured any door, alleyway or manhole through which the living dead might go through.

Lucky for us, we had an ample supply of fuel for the helicopters that we had. A few days into the undead siege, things seemed to be going better than expected – but no more. The barricades which were called crude and inefficient were actually holding. Yes, a lot of the time a zombie would get through one tiny opening, but they were easily dispatched. All we had to do was to discipline the soldiers into not slacking off and to make sure to keep up their morale.

_**How did you manage to keep up their morale?**_

I didn't handle the morale. Some other cabinet ministers were in charge of taking care of their morale. All I know is they were broadcasting messages, the President was constantly making speeches, there were posters being put up everywhere, that kind of stuff.

_**How did your soldiers know how to dispatch zombies?**_

We had to train them. We heard from survivors from Manila and from other parts of Luzon that those who were able to stop a zombie were able to do so by shooting the head, cutting it off, beating it to a pulp and so on. So we trained them to do that. But this wasn't as easy, we didn't exactly have a surplus in ammunition. We had to baptize them by fire. We sent them to the barricades to help dispatch the living dead that crawled through. As much for going on the offensive, this was as best as we could do.

By the way, I forgot to mention: the area around the Baguio Palace wasn't the only area in Baguio that was fortified.

_**What were the other areas?**_

First are the universities in the area. Students who decided to remain inside – or had no choice – merely locked their gates and organized their own living. The Baguio campus of the University of the Philippines should be noted as a great example. Locking their campus to the outside world, they were able to grow their own food. The students were able to pool all their resources into barricading the entrances. We offered to evacuate them to other areas in Baguio. Only a handful accepted, the rest chose to remain independent. The administration of the University acted as... _rulers_ over the University. They trained the students to know how to farm, how to fight and basically how to be self-sufficient. They fought with knives duct-taped to the end of cadet rifles used for their National Service Training Programs. They weren't able to shoot a rifle, but most of their training focused on using that rifle to stab a zombie in the head.

And they had a surplus – yes, surplus – of these fake rifles. Modelled around the M1 Garand, they were heavy, yes but they were durable. When they couldn't use knives, they used scissors, sharpened pieces of wood, anything they could use.

Did you know that they actually went on the offensive earlier than we did? These amateur soldiers, college students, scholars, they would go out to _scavenge_ what they can in nearby homes. At first they were successful – when most of the horde was still focused on us. We would hear reports of students bragging about how many zombies they killed and how much supplies they brought. A few nights later, these amateur patrols stopped when large parts of the undead horde diverted their attention to the university. Mind you, this was the only university that was still standing, the rest of the universities were already overrun or evacuated; mostly overrun. I guess those raids by the students got the interest of the horde.

Before you know it, the campus was also under siege and they were now asking for assistance from us. Lucky for them, we were able to re-establish contact with Fort Del Pilar in Baguio and with the military academy inside it. I don't remember the full reports, it's been years, but the gist of the reports is that more than 80% of their forces were killed in an effort to retake the Fort. They did retake it. Apparently most of those who were killed were killed during their operations to barricade all entrances into the Fort. They were successful, but the danger was not over as a whole horde of the undead were now seen swarming the barricades to the Fort.

But we dealt with that slowly. We were able to supply the university with sturdier cadet M1 Garand's, this time with bayonet sockets and actual bayonets. This came as a relief for the students, for there was a hole in their defence that they couldn't plug – a poorly constructed part of their barricades, and thus there was a rotation for who would be aiding in stemming the flow of undead in the barricade. The cadet rifles of the students were now degrading from constant use. This did not stop them. They would constantly train; they would be drilling the students on how to aim their rifles at zombies. Sometimes they would collect heads that were still squirming for practice.

These students, amateurs, it pains me to admit that they were better disciplined than my own soldiers. The university had more students than we had soldiers, come to think of it. They were constantly training, while the only training we were able to afford was guard duty at the barricades. They would discipline them by merit. Any act that is seen as – to quote a clichéd phrase – "above and beyond the call of duty" would be rewarded with extra food rations, a day or two off from guard duty. They would advance in merit as well. Every kind of leader from communications officers and patrol leaders were chosen through merit.

I don't know who from the university's administration came up with this system of meritocracy, but it worked. Those who headed patrols, training and the rest were proven experienced and it showed the remnants of our _government_ the effectiveness of establishing a meritocratic army.

As for the military… well, I'd rather not dwell on that, but rest assured if given the choice, I would have sided with the students.

_**And you still believe your chances were better?**_

Well of course! We were fortified; we were able to properly dispatch the living dead. We had ample provisions, how could our luck not be better than expected? All the military geniuses I had all theorized our downfall in less than two months. It would be a year before we saw any real problems.

We weren't in a proper position to be able to go on the offensive, but we were fighting back – slowly but decisively. Everybody dreamed of the day when Baguio would finally be cleared of the living dead. It was turned into a slogan by the military geniuses at the Palace and the Fort – even slightly adopted by the University: "save Baguio, save the Republic".

It was the slogan that stuck. Along with some music that I have no intention to sing, it helped keep morale at a normal level.

"_**Normal level"? Do you mean to say morale was never high?**_

How could it be? We were still surrounded, everyone feared the day when the barricades that saved the lives of a thousand people would topple – and with it would unleash a horde of hundreds of thousands.

_**How did you prepare for this?**_

The 20 or so helicopters we had always had a full tank of gas. We made sure of this – but this was our last resort. We constructed more and more lines of barricades behind those we already had. Our perimeter getting smaller, but easier to defend with the few troops we already have.

Another problem with making more barricades is that we just ran out of things to make the barricades out of. We'd already emptied all of the surrounding buildings of everything they had – furniture, electronics and appliances were all but cleared out to use as a barricade. When we were able to construct two more lines of barricades around the Palace we stopped and instead made sure that all routes to the Palace were clear. There was already a redoubt made by the Palace gates, which would hold off the horde long enough for our troops to evacuate the vicinity and retreat to the Palace, where – supported by the few remaining helicopters at the Fort – we would do all in our effort to evacuate all military and civilian personnel to the Fort, which is sorely lacking in manpower, with only a few thousand soldiers ready to defend it.

_**A few thousand? Wouldn't that be enough to fight off the horde?**_

It was, but we didn't know that. Our weapons were old Vietnam-era M16's. Our ammunition supply didn't allow us to have an all-out offensive. A defensive action was all we could afford. The artillery we had was only effective at distracting the horde. The sound of an artillery shell pounding a street was enough for members of the horde to turn the other direction – but only for a few minutes. Gunshots from our weapons were still loud enough to hear.

_**You said that it was a year before you started having any problems, what were these problems?**_

Idiotic politicians and military so-called geniuses who only want glory were one of our main problems. A year into the siege of Baguio and they were getting impatient. They wanted a victory. Only the President seemed relaxed. He put all his faith in me, and he trusted me. That should have been enough for them, but of course they wanted more, they wanted to press on for an offensive. They continually pressed me to go on an offensive action. I kept repeating the reasons why we couldn't afford such an offensive action.

_**So you went on the offensive?**_

Yes. They wouldn't stop until they had their offensive. Not the military commanders who were under me in the chain of command or the politicians who never served a day in their life. All of them wanted me to turn the tide. The President had no choice. He compelled me to convene a meeting with the remnants of my military personnel. Not just the generals, but also those from the colonels to the lieutenants. We needed the advice of all our experienced personnel.

The President went a bit further – he invited some of the students from the University and the Secretary of Defense to the meeting to help discuss any viable options for an offensive. The President was a genius in making sure none of the crackhead politicians joined the meeting.

After a day of bickering between military officers, one of the students was able to contribute an option, what he called a "passive offense". This was the only strategy that I would accept. The President agreed with me, and thus the meeting was adjourned. All but one of the students was flown back to the University. That one Student – who I refuse to name - aided us in cooking up the strategy he contributed.

The way it works is that we would place some of our military personnel on top of the buildings that overlooked the horde at the barricade. Using a steady stream of fire, we would slowly whittle down the horde. We were already doing that, but before then we were only doing it to stragglers who were able to squeeze themselves into the other side of the barricades. Now, we would be doing it even to those still outside the barricades.

To aid in this "passive offense", the Fort would be contributing with a continuous artillery barrage on the horde that was forming outside the Fort, the Palace and the University. Along with that they would be supplying us with a constant stream of ammunition for our M16 rifles.

When it came to the University, the tone of the Student changed. We offered him one whole battalion to aid him in an effort to quell the horde outside the University. He said he only needed one company of soldiers. This company would be the first experienced company we would have. L Company, or Lam-Ang Company, named after the hero of an epic. He also needed three weeks with L Company before he started on his offensive; and he requested that L Company use the surplus of M1 Garand's we had in the Fort. We agreed, of course. It would save us ammunition that we needed for our other rifles, and we did have a surplus of ammunition for the M1 Garand's.

_**What did he do with L Company in those three weeks?**_

He trained them! He trained them in effective bayonet combat. I use the word effective because the bayonet combat that they received training for was for people who were alive, people who would die when the bayonet struck their chest. No, he taught them how to properly aim their bayonets. With one fluid strike, they would hit the brain. I myself observed their training, the way he trained them was so successful, his doctrine so perfect that to this day it is being used by the Philippines and by other members of the South-East Asian Federation of Nations, including here in Malaysia. With one strike, members of L Company were able to hit the dummies that the students were using for practice.

Do you remember that hole in the University's defense that I mentioned? The one they couldn't close? Well, in the last week of L Company's training, they were sent to the hole. The shady [expletive deleted] at the University's administration were busy in the first two weeks with creating a line of defenses around the hole just for this. Should L Company fail their baptism of fire, the University would be prepared.

I observed the events firsthand. They were given the old, shoddy M1 Garand's that the students first used before being replaced by those from the Fort. L Company had 120 soldiers, yet the Hole – as it was known by the University - wasn't big enough to accommodate all of them. They were sent into the Hole in squads of ten soldiers. They would spend one whole hour there before being replaced by another group of ten soldiers. All of them seemed to pass the University's "test".

Now came the University's real offensive. The Student was able to devise a formation, wherein there would be three lines of ten soldiers each, one line would be sitting – yes, sitting – on the floor, firing at the horde while the other line was behind them, ready to bayonet any zombie that came close. The third line of soldiers would be ready to replace anyone that needed to be replaced.

When the day came that they would begin the offensive, the whole University lit up in a noise barrage. Students were screaming, horns were blowing, pots and pans were clanging. All of this was done in an effort to attract the horde to the Hole. The Fort was helping, they were given the coordinates of an area just in front of the Hole, and there they fired their artillery, taking down some of the horde, but attracting an even larger portion of the horde. With a request from the Student, all sound from the Palace and the Fort – gunfire, voices, everything – was kept to a minimum, in order to attract a larger part of the horde to the University. This was where I became concerned.

_**Why were you concerned?**_

They were students! They were young and naïve, who was I to think that they would be the pioneers of our effort to retake Baguio city. Who was I to think that they would forge majority of the modern military doctrines of the South-East Asian Federation of Nations?

_**Well what happened next?**_

The battle of the Hole went on for a week. After twelve hours the whole pile of dead actually plugged the Hole. Due to this, pressure around the Hole increased, and the barricades beside the Hole collapsed, thus the Hole grew wider. With this, it meant more soldiers needed to properly defend the Hole.

The students were everywhere behind the barricades. They all had their replica M1 Garand rifles ready, with the bayonets ominously polished. Why they bothered to polish their bayonets, I have no idea.

After an hour or two of continuous fighting, we would ask for a lull in the waves before we could replace the members of L Company we had in the Hole.

_**I'm sorry, "ask" for a lull?**_

Artillery strikes. The boys at the Fort would fire a few rounds just outside the Hole. This would give us a gap of a few seconds. It could be as long as thirty seconds or as short as five crucial seconds. When the artillery sounded, all of the boys of L Company inside the Hole would be ordered to open fire and then run for one exit in the barricades. After which, another group of L Company would come in from another opening in the barricades, where they would replace them. Five seconds, that's how long it takes to replace a unit. Five seconds. Any longer than that and the Hole may have been overrun.

_**How did the battle at the Hole turn out?**_

Victory. The first victory we've had ever since the outbreak. Very few of the zombies were now around the University's vicinity, but there was still a significant horde lurking outside the barricades of the Palace and the Fort.

The Secretary of Defense worked fast here. He quickly filled all of our helicopters with soldiers and sent them to the University in the thousands. The repositioning of majority of the remaining strength of the Fort to the University took all day, and this meant that the zombies were now following the sound of the helicopters, but the final trip that was made by the helicopters was made to attract the horde back to the virtually abandoned Fort, with the Fort's population now relocated to the University.

_**This was it? This was the offensive everyone asked for?**_

Yes, and it happened right under my nose. I didn't approve of it, but I made clear to the President that I wouldn't go against it, as it looked like I was the only one who didn't want an offensive.

_**What happened to L Company?**_

The Student requested that they stay at the University. L Company was tired, and with my support the Secretary of Defense overlooked L Company, and they were allowed to rest at the University for the moment.

_**How was the offensive carried out?**_

Well we had thousands of soldiers, all of them armed with either an M16 or an M1 Garand. All of them were ordered explicitly to aim for the zombie's head.

Before they headed out they were all ordered to fix their bayonets, which would act as a last resort. Due to their lack of proper drilling from the University, they would be unable to form the lines that we had at the Hole.

So they just charged. They went outside the Hole and they just rushed the whole [expletive deleted] city. Can you imagine that? It wasn't as big a slaughter as I had anticipated, but it still wasn't worth it losing all those men in the process. It was brutal to watch. Every street there were at least a hundred zombies waiting and the Secretary of Defense's orders were clear: "keep moving!"

It seemed like a plausible tactic. When you've got ten zombies heading towards you, and your clip only holds eight bullets you don't stand there, you run! Run and Gun, those were the tactics implemented at the Battle for Baguio. When a zombie was far away and isolated, you shoot him. When a zombie was close, you bayonet him. When there were multiple zombies near you, you run back and then when you are at a proper distance away from any zombies around your perimeter, you shoot.

_**Did this tactic work?**_

Well, it wasn't a perfect tactic, but what can you do when they aren't trained to fight in formation? The other method of fighting they know is against humans, and that method is worthless.

Always the problem is that the soldiers are only aware of the group of zombies they're running away from. They wouldn't bother to check their perimeter before taking down the zombies in front of them. The other problem would be accuracy. Sometimes they just aren't trained to aim directly for the head. They'd fire off their whole clip or magazine and they still haven't taken care of all the zombies in front of them. Another problem is bayonet combat. In bayonet combat they're trained to aim at the body, not the head. Without the bayonet training the University students and L Company had, they would lunge for a zombie and they'd entirely miss the brain, and since lunging would mean closing the gap between you and the zombie, if they weren't able to take out the zombie's brain, they were dead.

_**Tell me about the Battle for Baguio.**_

It lasted two weeks, if I'm correct. It only took us four days to properly sweep the streets of zombies – incurring close to a thousand casualties along the way. What we had a problem with was the buildings. More of our troops died clearing out the buildings than they did clearing out the streets. We didn't have weapons built for such close quarters. All we had were the bayonets on the end of our rifles. What happened next was one of the things I regret not stopping.

The Secretary of Defense grew impatient and desperate. It took a day to clear out a two-story building only because we received so many casualties. The Secretary of Defense asked help from the University not in the form of training, but in actual military assistance. He wanted the University students to replace his soldiers in clearing out the buildings.

I protested, but the Secretary rebuked me, saying that my feelings for the University were clouding my judgment. How dare he accuse me of such! They were too young! Why on earth would you be sending students out to fight a war? They belonged in the classroom, not in the battlefield.

But the Student relented. He agreed to give the whole University population – about three-thousand students – and L Company for the effort to retake Baguio city. His voice of authority in the University made me somehow doubt that he really was just a student, and if so then he must have a slick tongue to be able to convince the University administration – which we've been regularly meeting with – that helping retake Baguio city is worth risking the students.

Luckily, the Student came prepared. He brought out one Toyota pickup truck with large sound systems installed in the back. In an effort to distract the zombies, he regularly played Rivermaya's _Awit ng Kabataan_ over and over again. You'll know about that, today it's the University's unofficial anthem.

_**What for?**_

To distract the zombies and to mask the entrance of the students. Clever, wouldn't you say? Well it worked. Casualties were minimal. The only problem was the sound system drew all the zombies in the radius of the sound to the truck, lucky for the Student he had L Company at his disposal. While the students were busy clearing out the nearby buildings, L Company blocked off the area around the Toyota.

Then the Secretary of Defense got jealous of all the glory the Student and L Company was receiving. Having cleared out half of the buildings in Baguio in two days, the Secretary ordered the students to retreat, claiming that he just realized his wrongs and that the safety of the students was first. It was true, and I applauded this, but his primary reason for taking out the students was that he wanted the glory for himself. He ordered back what remained of our military and it took him eight days to clear out the remaining half of Baguio, incurring more and more casualties.

But in the end, the Secretary was applauded by the Palace for clearing out majority of the living dead. After another month of sweeping operations, Baguio was declared safe and all residents were free to return to their individual homes – but not before stopping by the Fort. Since we had a surplus of old World War II-era weapons, we gave each man and woman a pistol, just in case.

_**When things were considered relatively safe in Baguio, what other problems did you encounter?**_

Let me think… well food wasn't a problem; there were literally miles of farmland ready for us to properly cultivate. I would say the main problem would be crime. How do you handle a criminal in a moment when you could not afford to keep the criminal? When you could not afford to maintain a prison nor spare the guards?

Even the President had no choice on the matter. The Secretary of Defense agreed. Majority of the President's cabinet agreed that we had to do it.

_**Do what?**_

Execute the criminal. But we had to do it in the most humane way possible. We had no means to hang a person, we didn't want to shoot them, and so we resorted to lethal injection. Baguio City General Hospital was able to spare the chemicals needed for a lethal injection.

But merely executing a criminal wasn't enough. We had to make sure that the whole populace new of the consequences for committing a crime. We had to do the executions publicly.

Once the executions started, crime rates went down. A few months after properly securing Baguio city it was clear that there were no zombies left in Baguio City, the Secretary of Defense and the President wanted the firearms we've been giving civilians to be returned. I was against this – and for good reason.

Who's to say that every single undead being was gone from Baguio? It'd be decades before we could be sure that they've rotted away. Crime was all but gone since we began executing criminals. In total we executed 158 criminals – men and women, adults and children alike. Yes, we executed children. Not a day goes by that I don't ask God for forgiveness for killing all those people.

After we executed the 158 criminals, crime virtually disappeared. The streets began to get cleaner, all semblance of normal life seemed to reappear – except for the fact that the rest of the country was still swarming with the horde. We thought we could wait out the infection, thinking that they'd rot away as long as we were safe and hidden up in Baguio. It seemed to be true. Nobody came our way. Once or twice a group of refugees – or a single person – would wander into Baguio, finding it weirdly lacking of living dead, and would suddenly run into a group of soldiers.

Once or twice they would start firing, thinking that we were marauders who were there to ransack their supplies. It would take them a while before they figured out that we were what remained of the government.

When one of these groups of refugees killed four of our soldiers before they realized we were the government, it came to light the ignorance of our government: we were unaware of what was happening outside of Baguio. The Philippines was a nation of around 100 million people, plus God knows how many more millions of our Filipino brethren were living overseas? 100 million people and we were arrogant enough to think that we were the only ones who survived?

We knew what we had to do now: we had to contact every corner of the Philippines in an effort to tell them that there is still a government that is ready to take you in. We flew what remained of our air force every day in an effort to be able to make contact. We airdropped supplies over pockets of resistance, whatever they could need – weapons, food, water, medicine, ammunition. Granted, all of the weapons and ammunition we supplied were World War II-era, but who were they to turn down a weapon that could kill a zombie?

Our planes could reach only as far as the southern tip of Luzon. Anywhere else and our planes would run out of fuel. But I tell you this: from Batanes in the north to the southern tip of Luzon we supplied literally thousands of pockets of resistance with tones of food, weapons and ammunition. From the sleepy provincial village high in the mountains to what remained of the population in Manila, we were able to reestablish communication and send supply drops constantly and with good efficiency.

_**Did you hear about the rest of the world? Your South-East Asian neighbors? China? America?**_

_At this point Mrs. Razon holds her own head in her hands, as she signals that she is having a minor headache. I told her that I would leave for the day, continuing my interview some other time._


End file.
